Path Of Exile Teases New Pets, Tortoise OP Speed Demon

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An update due Wednesday (19 August) will bring six (6) new flavours of pet to Path of Exile [official site]. They include the fastest tortoise I’ve ever seen and a well-behaved lemur. Also a pukeko which I didn’t know was a real bird until now. I’m mostly posting about this because it let me assess a bunch of digital pets.

Pets can be bought as part of the game’s microtransaction system. They’re not a combat thing otherwise you’d be striding deep into pay to win territory, they’re a set of pixels in the form of a cute* critter which follow you round and keep you company as you path and/or exile things. Here they all are, starting with this utterly broken tortoise:

They’re nice enough, although given the news also gave me an excuse to go back through Path of Exile’s existing pets I feel like there’s nothing outstandingly weird here. Maybe they add weirder aspects later – is that how pets work in Path of Exile? For example I’m quite taken with the Gore Weta which is basically a big cricket-like thing enveloped in a cloud of blood which haemorrhages everywhere. Did they just add the normal Weta and then at some point a designer said “This Weta is all well and good and a fine addition to our game but I feel like we could spice things up with some kind of atomised blood cloak.”

Will we see a toxic tortoise eventually? Speeding about in a poisonous miasma, dribbling venom across the land? Or a burning pukeko, blood-red eyes scanning the horizon, feathery flames licking your hand as you pet it absent-mindedly?

Also I am fond of the Blue Land Crab because it seems really mad at you and keeps its back to you as you scamper about:

Finally I’m going to give a shout out to the Infernal Fox which seems to just be a fox that has caught fire.

I know it’s not exactly the same, but maybe try a totem build? They are kinda like summons, toss them into a room before you enter, wait for them to finish burning anything in sight, you can have three totems with the Ancestral Bond capstone and the unique chest armor Soul Mantle.

I’m leveling one atm and it’s a lot of fun, and a thousand miles away from the “OH GOD WHY DO YOU SUCK SO BAD ZOMBIES!?” experience of, say, eighteen months ago. Zombies, Skeletons, Raging Spirits, some support skills (auras, Convocation, Desecrate, etc.) and add Firestorm for AE and you’re golden.

Oh, also, you could go the more unusual melee route and use dominating blow if you want to wade into battle with an army of former enemies at your side, melee splash it and you can take over heaps of enemies with each hit. I guess you might want the classic summon spells for bosses in their own room though.

Just don’t go summoner-only. Go hybrid. Really no excuse to not build a hybrid regardless of what you want the base of your character to be, builds are very flexible.

My Templar is a summoner. He summons exploding zombies and skeletons. He also hauls around a 2H axe with Molten Strike, Molten Shell, and Firestorm. On top of that I use the lightning aura to enhance my attacks and have added cold damage on certain skills/minions. I shred through packs of MOBs in cruel difficulty so far.

It’s a bit sad that RPS seems to give good coverage to most ARPGs out there, but when Path of Exile, arguably the greatest of them all, releases a full expansion which changes almost the whole game a month ago, there’s no WIT.

Ah well, at least we get to see the pets. Toad friend! (Also, Pip, you missed the Rhoa pets from a couple of expansions ago, I think you would have liked those)